Ghosts and Sodium Chloride

Halloween has come and gone once again.  And with the season, there was a flood the obligatory pieces written by reporters who went on a ghost hunt with their friendly neighborhood paranormal group and got creeped out.  Overall, at least the ones I perused, the articles were pretty cliche: "skeptical" reporter gets assigned to go ghost hunting with paranormal "experts".   Equipment with blinky lights are used, "unexplained" shadows are seen and eerie noises are heard.  So at the end of the night, the reporter believes they experienced something paranormal.   While these make for entertaining seasonal reading, they should be taken with a grain of salt.

I will break down one such article here.  I won't link to it because it was fairly typical of other such articles and I don't want to bring attention to the ghost hunting group.  It describes the same tired ghost hunting "formula" we've seen (without any breakthroughs) for the past several decades: ghost hunters with a bunch of blinky technical gear, a psychic or two coming along, all wandering around in a dark building looking for signs of ghostly activity.  (For more about the formula, please see: http://carolynscreepycorner.blogspot.com/2015/06/stop-insanity.html)

A reporter was assigned to go to a haunted location with a local ghost hunting group.  While the reporter claimed she was skeptical, that was the last indiction of any skepticism in the story.  She described the ghost hunters as "paranormal experts".  Here's problem number one: If the reporter was a true skeptic, she would investigate and provide information on what the heck makes these folks "experts".  Formal education? Training? Professional experience?  Just because they said so?  As I've said before, as far as I'm aware, there is no degree or certification from any accredited institution in ghost hunting.  Unlike real professions, there is no licensing nor a governing body through any state department of education monitoring those in the paranormal field.  Anyone can put up a website, print up nifty tee shirts and call themselves ghost hunters, paranormal investigators, etc.

The reporter went on to say this group uses both psychic and scientific methods in their investigating.  Readers know by now how I feel about psychic methods and how subjective and even misleading they are.  As one who promotes critical thinking, I'm all for scientific methods.  But there was no description from the reporter of any scientific methodology.  Not a peep about hypotheses, independent testing of validity of claims, or any known scientific reasons how people mistake a situation for paranormal.  No mention of environmental, physiological or psychological issues that create misperceptions of seemingly paranormal events.   She did talk about them using EMF meters with flashing lights that lit up from time to time.  No explanation though of electromagnetic fields, nor what can affect them.  No description of the specific meters and what environmental factors can influence them such as EMFs from other equipment, cell phones, certain metals, etc. In fact, she describes the team using a ghost app on their cell phones while using the EMF meters.  For those who don't understand why this is a problem: EMF meters can pick up radio frequencies, including those from cell phones.  Other equipment used by the team included infrared cameras and voice recorders.  Again, no word from our supposed skeptical reporter on how these devices work, why they were being used, or how useful they really are on a ghost hunt, or again, what factors can causes glitches and false positives.

The location for the ghost hunt is a historical hotel and, according to one of the ghost hunter's research, women were beaten and murdered there and their bodies dragged out from a fire escape.  Unfortunately, as we have seen, well-known stories from some of the most famous "haunted" locations are complete fabrications. So... did this really happen?  Is there an official record of this story in some dusty archives somewhere?  You would think a journalist would do some research to verify such claims, since they seemed provide an origin of why folks think the place is haunted and who might be haunting it.

The article goes on to describe how they wander through the building in the dark.  Mostly, the reporter describes how one of the ghost hunters used dowsing rods and could "sense" ghosts.  Throwing any objectivity out the window, the reporter seemed to buy completely into this.  So there was no explanation of how priming can influence what we perceive, nor any mention of how the ideomotor affect has been attributed to dowsing rods.  This "sensitive" ghost hunter kept describing feelings of heaviness or lightness in the air and seeing shadows here and there. No questioning of what else could cause such sensations in the environment, such as infrasound. There was no mention of the shadows being captured on any of the cameras.  Because of this, if I was a skeptical reporter, I might look into the possibility of visual misperception.  But there was nothing to indicate she had done so.  If she had, she would have found that our eyes do not see well in the dark, and how misperception of seeing shadows peripherally are fairly common in low light conditions.  (See an older post of mine, "Ghosts and Misperceptions": http://carolynscreepycorner.blogspot.com/2010/11/ghosts-and-misperception.html ) By the conclusion of the article, the reporter too had seen a shadow out of the corner of her eye and had the sensation that the room felt "lighter" after the shadow was gone.  The ghost hunters "confirmed" this as a paranormal experience and now the reporter has gone from supposed skeptic to believer.

But in my opinion, the reporter was never truly skeptical to begin with.  Approaching claims from a skeptical approach is active, not passive.  It requires one to question claims and test their validity, not take them at face value.  Granted, this was a fluff piece done in the spirit of Halloween but the problem with this, and others like it, is that was written by an actual journalist, a professional we are generally led to believe is impartial and strives to report facts.  But there was no fact-checking at all here.  These types of stories not only mislead the general public, but also inexperienced paranormal enthusiasts in particular, that such ghost hunts are scientific investigations, producing evidence of the paranormal when they are not. They perpetuate misinformation and detract from actual science and the pursuit of valid answers.  I think it would be wonderful to find authentic evidence of the paranormal.  But as long as many ghost hunters continue to ignore scientific methodology and stick to subjective means because they are more fun (and popular), I doubt they can reach that goal.

Dabbling with Dowsing

I've been busy lately, so this month will be a short post about an informal experiment I did.

According to Wikipedia, dowsing is defined as: "a type of divination employed in attempts to locate ground water, buried metals or ores, gemstones, oil, gravesites, and many other objects and materials without the use of scientific apparatus. Dowsing is considered a pseudoscience, and there is no scientific evidence that it is any more effective than random chance."  I have both read about and personally observed some ghost hunting groups using dowsing during their paranormal investigations.  Because I've learned about priming and the ideomotor effect many years ago, I'm doubtful that they are tuning into anything otherworldly.  But my friend Wes, who is a believer in the paranormal, claims dowsing has given him some interesting results.  He is mindful not to call the results evidence, because he understands how subjective they are.  One of the reasons he believes so strongly in it is that dowsing has helped him recover lost items. I recalled reading about how hypnotherapy can help people find things they have misplaced.  So I contacted a retired professional hypnotherapist acquaintance of mine who confirmed that regression has been used, with good results, with helping patients find lost items.  What this suggests to me is that we have the information stored away in our subconscious and we just need to a means to unlock it.  Wes's wife (who is one of my dearest friends) gave me a set of dowsing rods to try for myself.  I believe isn't fair to knock something until I try it, so I decided to experiment with them.

Before I get into that, I'd like to discuss why I had doubts that dowsing is an authentic method of spirit communication going into this.  Studies have shown that some typical methods of divination, including use of dowsing rods, spirit boards, using pendulums, etc. are nothing more than the ideomotor affect.  Simply put, suggestion and expectation can subconsciously influence our muscular movement.  This means the person doing the dowsing may be 100% honest and sincere, but unaware how their beliefs and preferences are likely causing the rods to move instead of a supernatural force.  There have been scientific experiments testing the claims of dowsers.   In the chapter titled, "Put Up or Shut Up" in James Randi's book Flim Flam, he explains how he offered a $10,000 reward for dowsers (and other people making supernatural claims) who could prove their supposed paranormal abilities under strictly controlled experiments.  He talks in detail about the conditions and the results of the dowsing tests conducted.  None of the dowsers were successful.  (By the way, the reward is now $1,000,000 as of yet, nobody has managed to collect it.)

Typical of dowsing rods I've seen at paranormal conventions, for sale on Amazon

My friend Wes told me his dowsing rods don't respond to his questions when he holds them, but they will whenever his wife does.  He speculates it is because she is more "open" to the energies since she is a receptive person, meaning, one of those people everyone likes.  He admits he can sometimes be, in his own words, a dick.  I myself am not a belle of the ball type of gal, so to test this claim, I asked my laid-back, likable husband to also participate in my experiment. He is a little more open to dowsing, as he told me he has known farmers in our area who used "water witches" for wells.  But I don't find that validates anything, since we live in a fairly soggy region, surrounded by lakes, streams, ponds, rivers, swamps, etc.   Since one of the main reasons my friend is convinced dowsing works is because he was able to find things they've lost with it, I decided to try the dowsing rods for this purpose.  I have misplaced one of my photo albums and would like very much to find it.

So I was careful to follow what Wes briefly taught me about using the rods.  I "grounded" them by touching them to the ground before I asked if I had spirit guides to show me "yes" by crossing the rods.  I got nothing - they didn't move.  I asked my own higher self (what I consider my subconscious) the same question and again the rods didn't move.  I grounded the rods again before I asked, "Is my lost photo album in this house?"  Again, no movement of the rods.  This continued with my list of questions:
"Is my lost photo album in the basement?"
"Is my lost photo album in the master bedroom?"
"Is my lost photo album in the spare bedroom?"
"Is my lost photo album in the den?"
"Is my lost photo album in the office?"
"Is my lost photo album in the living room?"
"Is my lost photo album not in the house?"

I got nothing; the rods did not move for me.  So I handed them to my husband, who grounded them before I asked to show me "yes" by crossing the rods.  The rods crossed.  But my husbands hands weren't level to the floor, so we started over.  He grounded them, kept his hands level and I asked again to cross them for a "yes".  They crossed again.  So I started my questions:
"Is my lost photo album in this house?"  They didn't move.  So I skipped to the last question: "Is my lost photo album not in the house?" The rods crossed.  I didn't like that answer, so I continued with my list.  The rods crossed for "yes" for the master bedroom.  So I asked if the album was under the bed in the master bedroom.  They crossed again.  I asked if it was in the closet in the master bedroom.  Again, they crossed.  (For the record, the bed is NOT in the closet.)  I asked if it was in the spare room and they crossed.  At this point, my husband said they're just saying yes to everything.  So I decided to move on to the next phase.  I had my husband put a sleep mask over his eyes and wear headphones with music playing, so he couldn't see or hear what I asked.  I switched the order of the questions and added a couple of non-relevant questions.  After, I found the results to be interesting:  the rods never moved at all for any of the questions, including the request to cross for yes.  My husband was surprised to learn they never moved this time around.  To me, this supports the idea that a subject holding the rods can be primed by the questions,  affecting the movement of the rods.

While my experiment was far from scientific, in my opinion, it does support the evidence that dowsing rods are more likely influenced by the dowser than by any supernatural forces.  I was really hoping to tap into something that would help me find my missing album, but for now, it remains lost.

Image from Wikipedia

Sources:


James Randi, Flim-Flam! Psychics, ESP, Unicorns and other Delusions
Prometheus Books, Buffalo, NY, 1982

http://skepdic.com/ideomotor.html


http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/apr/27/ouija-boards-dowsing-rods-bomb-detectors

http://www.csicop.org/si/show/testing_dowsing_the_failure_of_the_munich_experiments/

Logic and Lizards

Originally published for Paranormal Enlightenment Magazine: http://paranormalenlightenment.com/logic-lizards/

My late father was a man who had many interests.  For example, he built model trains and was an avid gardener.  It was common for him to call me out to the garage to show me a new model building he painted or out to the yard to show me a prized rose blooming.  Once in a while though, my dad would take advantage of my gullibility.  On one such occasion during a visit a few years ago, he called from the garage, "Come out here, so I can show this." Since he'd been busy working on more models, I suspected nothing nefarious about the request and ventured into the garage, where, with a smirk, he pointed down at something near my feet: a skink.  For those who don't know, skinks are long, skinny lizards that look very similar to something I am phobic about - snakes.  I screamed and broke a couple laws of physics by promptly levitating four feet backwards.  Dad got the biggest kick out of it, enjoying a good belly laugh at my expense.  (The skink remained unharmed.)

I will get back to dad and lizards in a moment, but before I do, I want to discuss something important for us, as paranormal investigators, to be aware of:  apophenia, commonly called pattern seeking.  According to RationalWiki, apophenia is "the experience of seeing meaningful patterns or connections in random or meaningless data".  Other related terms include Carl Jung's "synchronicity", in which he asserted that coincidences containing symbolism actually had meaning.  I've talked about Michael Shermer's term "patternicity" before.  From his book The Believing Brain:  "Our brains are belief engines, evolved pattern-recognition machines that connect the dots and create meaning out of the patterns that we think we see in nature.  Sometimes A really is connected to B; sometimes it is not."

There are types of apophenia that paranormal investigators should be aware of when trying to find the cause behind claims.  Many are already familiar with pareidolia, also called matrixing, where a subject sees a meaningful shape, most often faces, in random patterns.  This also applies to sound, when ambient noise at certain frequencies and patterns can sound like speech.  Confirmation bias is when one tests their hypothesis in ways to only confirm it, not disprove it.  Hindsight bias is concluding that seemingly meaningful events have caused a current situation.  This is common in the paranormal community, where people take random events and connect them.  For example, weird noises in the house, disturbing dreams, and sensation of cold spots if taken individually, will each likely have mundane and unrelated explanations, but putting them together makes a recipe for a classic "haunting".   Of course, priming increases the likelihood of seeing a certain pattern that isn't really there.  For example, if we are told that a picture has what looks like a little girl, we are more likely to see a little girl in a pixilated blob.  When we are told what a supposed EVP says, we are more likely to hear those words, even if what was recorded wasn't a voice or words at all.

During a recent visit home, I pruned the rose bushes for my mom.   Naturally, as I was doing so, I thought of my dad, who taught me where to make cuts on the plants as well as the history of some of the roses.  Like one that came from a cutting from my grandmother's yard, which grew from a cutting from my great-grandmother's yard.  Afterward, I took the cuttings to the proper garbage bin and when I lifted the lid, sitting on top of the yard waste and staring at me with malice, was a spotted lizard. Not proud to report that I developed a spontaneous case of Tourette's Syndrome and slammed the lid shut.  I couldn't help but think how my dad would have gotten a good laugh out of this.  (Later, with my mom by my side for protection, I propped the lid open so the lizard could safely get out.)

The next day, I went to visit my dad's grave.  Because it is in an old picturesque rural cemetery, I brought my camera with me.  As I wandered around some of the older graves, I soon sensed I was being followed.  I heard a rustling of leaves on the ground behind me as as I walked and turned around but saw nobody.  Feeling a little creeped out, I continued taking photos, and as I stooped to get a shot of a wooden marker, my stalker made itself known:  a little brown lizard.  I waved my arms at it to try to persuade it to go elsewhere, and, thankfully, it did.  But soon after, another rustling of dried leaves from the opposite direction revealed another brown lizard, running straight for me.  It hopped up on a the concrete boarder of a plot right by me and started doing little push ups, which I took as a direct threat to my well-being.  I decided me and my camera were going elsewhere.  And again, I thought of Dad, watching this scene and chuckling at my irrational fear of the tiny reptiles.

Was my connecting the lizards to my dad merely a product of apophenia?  As a skeptic, I have to admit it is most likely.  But might it be possible that Dad was somehow around, laughing with me?  As a grieving daughter, I want to think so.  A psychologist once explained to me that it doesn't matter whether such experiences are actual contact with deceased loved ones.  What matters is how they keep their memories alive, and eases the pain of our loss somewhat.

I continue to encourage paranormal investigators to remain objective and use critical thinking when investigating claims.  But my experiences also prompt me to remind researchers to understand how and why grieving clients may be processing and interpreting information.  Several years ago, I was part of a writing seminar in which we all critiqued each other's pieces.  A woman wrote a ghost story, where after the funeral of the main character's father, a balloon floated from room to room until it rested by a photo of the deceased man, proving he was there with them.  I had to open my big mouth to provide a rational explanation like air currents and the stack affect in homes, and said it would take a lot more in the story to convince me there was a ghostly visit.  The woman broke down in tears, and later someone explained to me that although she had written it in the third person, the story was about her own experience.  I felt awful, but it was a painful lesson for me to be much more sensitive to others' grief when listening to their paranormal claims.  Maybe that's why those lizards were giving me the stink-eye.

Sources:
RationalWiki: http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Apophenia


Michael Shermer, The Believing Brain: From Ghosts and Gods to Politics and Conspiracies - How We Construct Beliefs and Reinforce Them as Truths
New York: Times Books 2011, 59